The GOP is celebrating “the rich heritage of the American story”… with stock video of Russia, Ukraine and other overseas locations.
Republican leaders in the House released a video Friday titled “The Preamble to the Commitment to America,” which lays out the party’s political agenda for 2023 ahead of November’s midterm elections, focusing on what they believe it truly means to be American. The thing is, some of the beautiful archival footage used in the video meant to highlight America, isn’t of America at all.
“America is exceptional,” the video posted on YouTube by Kevin McCarthy begins. “As Americans, we cherish out rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We salute those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom.”
The clip shows a cheerful little boy running in an open field and playing with his toy airplane, which turns to archival footage of Allied forces storming Omaha Beach in Normandy during World War II followed by the raising of the American flag in Iwo Jima. Two unquestionably proud moments in American history. But that little boy with the toy plane had nothing to do with America and, was in fact, filmed in Russia and shot by Russian filmmaker Serg Grbanoff, Grbanoff in the country’s Volgograd region, he told Huffington Post.
And that wasn’t the only place the GOP used video shot in Russia and mascaraded it as the U.S. “We celebrate the rich heritage of the American story and the vibrancy of the American Dream,” a voice says over footage of a drilling rig silhouette in a setting sun. That “American Dream” clip was also courtesy of Grbanoff and just flipped vertically.
Another section of the GOP video shows a woman pushing a shopping cart in a grocery store, under it, the words read “… from crippling inflation and rampant crime…” To the lower left of the cart there’s a tag that reads “AKCIA,” which is a Slovakian sales tag.
Rep. McCarthy’s spokesman Mark Bednar told HuffPost, “Interesting how you guys aren’t remotely interested on the issues facing the American people in the video.”
You can watch the video in the clip below.